Assimi Goïta

With the Kremlin-connected mercenary group Wagner already in advanced talks with Colonel Assimi Goïta's government in Mali Russia could not have picked a more prickly moment to stir things up further with France whose troops have been deployed against jihadists in the country since 2013 (AC Vol 62 No 19 The Wagner act)...

' Junta leader Assimi Goïta also promised when taking power to maintain all prior security agreements...

And in September this year President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Mali's President Colonel Assimi Goïta by phone proposing cooperation across a range of areas – including military expertise on fighting terrorism...

Meanwhile Ecowas threatens international sanctions on Mali's interim head of state Assimi Goïta and his colleagues if they postpone scheduled polls beyond the February date to which they have committed but which they now hint may be impractical (AC Vol 62 No 14 Paris makes up with the junta)...

Yet the US may have if inadvertently created a club of coup plotters through its annual Operation Flintlock joint exercises with West African armies: it was on one such exercise in Burkina Faso in 2019 that Colonel Assimi Goïta leader of the current Malian junta met Doumbouya...

Reports have suggested Doumbouya may have got to know Assimi Goïta the 2020 Mali putschist now suspected of hoping to prolong his transitional rule until 2023 while both were on a United States-organised Flintlock regional training exercise...

The regional and international powers have accepted coup-leader Assimi Goïta's self-installation as president...

Not least Paris's condemnation of Colonel Assimi Goïta's coup d'état in Bamako but its acceptance of the military takeover in Ndjamena after the demise of Déby Itno opened Paris up to a familiar charge of hypocrisy (AC Vol 62 No 11 Don't call it a coup)...

However the following day an indignant declaration appeared in the name of Col Assimi Goïta Vice-President of the transition...

Signed by junta leader Colonel Assimi Goïta alone it insists that IBK resigned demands immunity from prosecution for those involved in the 18 August coup and states that in case of contradictions between the 1992 Constitution and the Charter the latter takes precedence...

Vice-President Assimi Goïta follows the same track saying the fight against terrorism remains top priority and the UN's Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations unies pour la stabilisation au Mali (Minusma) the French Opération Barkhane the regional G5 Sahel Force and even the embryonic European operation Takuba remain Mali's main partners in this...

The Vice-President will be the putschists' leader Colonel Assimi Goïta for whom the military have proposed extensive powers over the reshaping of the Malian state...

They are: Colonels Assimi Goïta and Malick Diaw respectively leader and deputy-leader of the committee; Colonel-Major Ismaël Wagué a fighter pilot and second-in-command of the air force; and Cols Modibo Koné and Sadio Camara...